Hot New Bands \ #1 \ No Hot Ashes

Welcome to a brand new series called Hot New Bands! Yes this is probably a staple of all other music websites and blogs out there right now but with the amount of submissions received and connections made over the last three years of trying to write coherent sentences about good music I thought it was about time for me to jump on the bandwagon too. It’s an idea that’s pretty self-explanatory – this is all about showcasing some of the best new talents currently producing music at this very moment. You may have seen various reviews of losing my shit over a certain band so now I wish to make my voidance of literal bowels a little more regular. Once a week I will be writing very fondly of a certain band or artist whose music has tickled my fancy since the start of the year, and hopefully it all collate into one glorious playlist of epic proportions.

The first band to debut this new series has got to be No Hot Ashes. These guys are a four piece band from Manchester and their sound is made up of elements of funk rock and hip hop to create something that’s gritty but also full of reasons to get dancing along to their songs. At the start of the month I raved quite strongly about their debut single Goose as it is offered up the perfect introduction to their possibly polarising blend of genres. The two genres come together nicely to produce a track that’s full of heavy guitar riffs, danceable basslines and all sorts of breakdowns, tempo shifts and guitar solos that all in all creates something that becomes a very confident way to say hello to the music industry.

Very rarely is there a scenario in which I’m listening to a band’s debut and I’m already uttering the words “these guys are gonna be big” before the song’s over. I can only think of a handful of artists who have brought out this reaction in me and No Hot Ashes certainly did that. They’ve already received quite a bit of buzz from all over the country and Goose has hit the 30,000 plays on Spotify which is a momentous milestone to reach for a band that’s still pretty young into its career, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that these guys will be all over the place throughout the next 12 months.

Check out Goose below and let me know what you think. The record label Playing With Sound has been a wonderful discovery of exciting British music already this year so I’m excited to feature more of their artists for this new series too. But yeah, get into No Hot Ashes so you can become the coolest guy out of your group before they inevitably become big.